I don't want to be the guy that says all we need is x Gbit/sec but I am having trouble coming up with a use for 7 Gbps. That would seem to require a faster storage than a SSD to be useful for anything other than a burst transmission. Of course you never get that in the real world but I think 1.7 Gbps should do me good for a while. Now I just need to get Google fiber and upgrade all the servers in the world and I will be good.

I don't want to be the guy that says all we need is x Gbit/sec but I am having trouble coming up with a use for 7 Gbps. That would seem to require a faster storage than a SSD to be useful for anything other than a burst transmission. Of course you never get that in the real world but I think 1.7 Gbps should do me good for a while. Now I just need to get Google fiber and upgrade all the servers in the world and I will be good.

The 7Gbit 802.11ad standard is designed for very fast in room communications. Ideal uses are for things like TV's that can be paired to receivers wirelessly, and PC's that can talk to TV's and stream video and uncompressed audio.

Its not really a wifi standard for home wireless, and can co-exist with the ac standard.

As a person who always prefers the stability of wired over wireless, I have to wonder where the SOHO-priced wired switches that offer greater than gigabit speeds are. I can't be the only one who sees gigabit networking speeds as limiting when streaming high-def content over a network.

As a person who always prefers the stability of wired over wireless, I have to wonder where the SOHO-priced wired switches that offer greater than gigabit speeds are. I can't be the only one who sees gigabit networking speeds as limiting when streaming high-def content over a network.

I'll second that.

Where are the SOHO priced 10 Gbps wired switches? As is I'd end up feeding the 1.3 or 1.7 Gbps capability from a 1 Gbps switch.

I'm wired with full Cat 6a, but the current switches and routers are all 1 Gbps. (I thought about Cat 7 when we did the install a couple years ago but at the time it wasn't cost effective and nothing really needed it.) A simple set of swaps of the boxes to all 10 Gbps interfaces and I'm there.

I don't want to be the guy that says all we need is x Gbit/sec but I am having trouble coming up with a use for 7 Gbps.

Presumably multiple devices will share that bandwidth, so there's more for each one when there's contention. Throw in uses like uncompressed video and wireless docking stations. That much bandwidth could provide USB 3.0 functionality without wires. We have enough power cords lying about already; if we can reasonably eliminate some of the data cords, all the better.

And that's my very in-the-box thinking. Others will think up far better uses when more bandwidth is available.

I can't be the only one who sees gigabit networking speeds as limiting when streaming high-def content over a network.

Given that a gigabit is like 25 times the maximum bit rate of BluRay, I think you may very well be.

What about 4K and 8K video? I know content and display tech isn't there yet, but it will be in a couple years (well, maybe not for 8K), and commercial networking doesn't really advance all that fast.

4k is 4 times the resolution of BluRay, but it will use the new h.265 codec which is twice as efficient. Also you get some efficiency savings with higher pixel counts so after all is said and done 4K will be somewhere around 1.5x BluRay's bitrate. Also Bluray has a lot of junk on it. A quality rip of a 1080p movie is around 10GB. I expect streaming services to do 4K movies around 15GB.

Not sure how many need this kind of speed? I stream multiple device on a $29 Netgear set at 54 Mbps. Since my broadband is 25mbps. I question how buying a expensive AC router or WAP will improve that? Not unless I plan to run a lot of devices accessing at the same time? Seems over kill to me.

I don't want to be the guy that says all we need is x Gbit/sec but I am having trouble coming up with a use for 7 Gbps. That would seem to require a faster storage than a SSD to be useful for anything other than a burst transmission. Of course you never get that in the real world but I think 1.7 Gbps should do me good for a while. Now I just need to get Google fiber and upgrade all the servers in the world and I will be good.

1.7Gb sounds "too fast" until you cut that speed in half for more common signal issues, then remind yourself that people will probably be using the same routers 5-8 years from now when we have 10Gb Internet and SSDs that can move 4GB/s+.

I can't be the only one who sees gigabit networking speeds as limiting when streaming high-def content over a network.

Given that a gigabit is like 25 times the maximum bit rate of BluRay, I think you may very well be.

What about 4K and 8K video? I know content and display tech isn't there yet, but it will be in a couple years (well, maybe not for 8K), and commercial networking doesn't really advance all that fast.

Well, for one, it sounded like the OP somehow though GbE was limiting his streaming already. And even looking ahead, given that wired GbE can support multiple concurrent 4K streams per port, I have a hard time seeing this as a critical bottleneck.

I don't want to be the guy that says all we need is x Gbit/sec but I am having trouble coming up with a use for 7 Gbps. That would seem to require a faster storage than a SSD to be useful for anything other than a burst transmission.

Not to mention the 60GHz frequency is great for avoiding noise and congestion. Do you really expect to get 1.7Gb in the real world? Be sure you're accounting for the overhead and real-world interference and congestion.

As a person who always prefers the stability of wired over wireless, I have to wonder where the SOHO-priced wired switches that offer greater than gigabit speeds are. I can't be the only one who sees gigabit networking speeds as limiting when streaming high-def content over a network.

I'll second that.

Where are the SOHO priced 10 Gbps wired switches? As is I'd end up feeding the 1.3 or 1.7 Gbps capability from a 1 Gbps switch.

I'm wired with full Cat 6a, but the current switches and routers are all 1 Gbps. (I thought about Cat 7 when we did the install a couple years ago but at the time it wasn't cost effective and nothing really needed it.) A simple set of swaps of the boxes to all 10 Gbps interfaces and I'm there.

I was cheap and just went with Cat 6. Figured since I was only doing 50 ft stretches it should be fine for 10Gb. That is of course assuming that it ever becomes economically feasible. I have been watching it for years and it just never seems to be going down in price. Maybe it's because 1GB is good enough for 99% of the population and everyone is more worried about wifi speeds that it's not being pushed for. Hell, with how many low-end computers I see being sold without even gigabit it might be a while

Honestly, this is all well and good, but this is probably only within the LAN for that network, right? Not going out onto the Internet and running a speedtest to get 1.7Gbps? Because most of the US has little or no access to Gb connections, unless they mortgage something to pay for it.

I know that this site is catering less to IT and more to gadgetry fans these days, but can we stop calling WAPs and Internet gateways "routers?"

Most of those boxes do actually perform routing.

Only the very basic routing every PC can perform. No BGP in there... Firewalls also perform routing. Smart and multi-layer switches also perform routing. Home APs are a combination of router/firewall/AP/server/etc. Calling them a router isn't accurate for them, or for routers, and neither would be calling them by any of the other above names. You wouldn't call it a server, would you? Yet they act as DNS/DHCP/Web servers well enough.

Where are the SOHO priced 10 Gbps wired switches? As is I'd end up feeding the 1.3 or 1.7 Gbps capability from a 1 Gbps switch.

Link aggregation (a.k.a. bonding, teaming, etc.) will allow you to connect two NIC ports (whether on the same card, or two seperate cards) to a 1GbE switch, and get the full 2Gbps effective speed. That is, of course, assuming the switching backplane of the embedded switches in these $50 home APs can handle that kind of throughput.

Also:

* That 1.7Gbps is going to be basically shared between all your wireless devices, while wired devices will have a dedicated 1GbE port. * If you count both upload/download, you GbE ports ARE actually 2Gbps.* There's no reason* 10GbE is EXPENSIVE, and I don't expect home users to have them very soon yet.* Building 10GbE switches and interfaces into a home AP would be very expensive, and almost no home users would get ANY benefit from it... They'd be competing with low-end enterprise equipment at that point.

I know that this site is catering less to IT and more to gadgetry fans these days, but can we stop calling WAPs and Internet gateways "routers?"

Most of those boxes do actually perform routing.

BGP? E/IGRP? OSPF? No. No, they don't. Some of them support RIP, I suppose.

These things are WAPs and NAT gateways. These are not routers. They are two different things, and on a website that prides itself as being a smart tech news site, this shouldn't be a big thing to ask to know the difference.

Given that a gigabit is like 25 times the maximum bit rate of BluRay, I think you may very well be.

Anyone doing editing would need to transfer the uncompressed video over the network, which will be far, far larger than blu-ray.

That may be so (tho I'm not sure why you wouldn't do the editing on local storage); however, the OP specifically talked about "streaming high-def content". I'm not arguing that there are no use cases that benefit from faster-than-gigabit ethernet; it's just that I don't think HD streaming is realistically one of them.

Obviously not, given that a NIC alone is $400. But keep in mind that "1.7 Gbps" is really more like 900 Mbps and it's half duplex while Ethernet is full duplex. In theory a 1.7 Gbps AP could be doing 850 up plus 850 down to a gigabit Ethernet port.

I know that this site is catering less to IT and more to gadgetry fans these days, but can we stop calling WAPs and Internet gateways "routers?"

You need to clarify what you are trying to whine about. My internet gateway (cable modem) in fact is also a router and a Wireless Access Point. My WAP is in fact a router and a WiFi modem which I run in WAP mode so that addressing is the same for my wireless and wired devices.

So now that I have mentioned the extremely common counter examples we are left wondering wth you are going on about. Are you actually in IT? If so, 3 decades ago called, and they want their theoretical separation of the iso 7 layer network model back. Also, they want you to know that even then they were blending across layers already.

So does this bode for wireless HDMI maybe becoming a functional reality? I know such devices already exist, but from the reviews all fail in some way or another (lag, insufficient bandwidth to push proper 1080p, etc).

I can't be the only one who sees gigabit networking speeds as limiting when streaming high-def content over a network.

Given that a gigabit is like 25 times the maximum bit rate of BluRay, I think you may very well be.

What about 4K and 8K video? I know content and display tech isn't there yet, but it will be in a couple years (well, maybe not for 8K), and commercial networking doesn't really advance all that fast.

4k is 4 times the resolution of BluRay, but it will use the new h.265 codec which is twice as efficient. Also you get some efficiency savings with higher pixel counts so after all is said and done 4K will be somewhere around 1.5x BluRay's bitrate. Also Bluray has a lot of junk on it. A quality rip of a 1080p movie is around 10GB. I expect streaming services to do 4K movies around 15GB.

So does this bode for wireless HDMI maybe becoming a functional reality? I know such devices already exist, but from the reviews all fail in some way or another (lag, insufficient bandwidth to push proper 1080p, etc).

60FPS @ 24bit colour @ 1920x1080 still requires about 3 million bits per second. You can always 'cheat' in some way by reducing framerate (30 will get you to 1.5 million bits), or by employing lossless compression (but that'll induce heavy latency).

To the folks discussing 10gig Ethernet as a possibility for their homes wired with CAT6 or CAT6a cable... Don't hold your breath.

Almost no one in real networking does 10gig over twisted pair copper (10Gbase-T). The power requirements alone are ridiculous. If you pay average rates for power, it only takes a year or two for your extra power cost to warrant having gone with fiber instead.Hardware availability is a huge problem too. What I mean by that is that there aren't a lot of different products to choose from and they're all expensive.

Almost all 10G traffic travels over fiber unless the distance is *really* short, and then you might use a "twinax" cable (copper cable which plugs directly into an SFP slot).

So, since high-end commercial use doesn't drive volume of 10Gbase-T, there is very little downward cost pressure.

All that said, a quick search says that if you're willing to put up with the massive power draw, you can pick up an 8-12 port 10Gbase-T switch for about $2000, if you can find one in stock somewhere.

A true WAP isn't a router, but then again, almost no home user has a WAP connected to their cable modem. They have a home router, which does, in fact, route traffic between different networks. That's all a router is. Just because it happens to be capable of doing a bunch of other stuff doesn't mean it isn't a router. Your cell phone can be a router, if it supports the WiFi hotspot feature.

The really short version is, if it has a "WAN" port and a "LAN" port, then it's a router. That's not an all inclusive definition--some other things are also routers.